Casserole

I have no doubt that almost anyone reading this will have received a similar email to the one I've copied out below. I just think it's amazing and hilarious that anyone would consider paying $55 to receive the parcel. Not quite as illiterate as some of the tweets I read from young Man City fans (I'm no Michael Gove, but some of the spelling I see around is just atrocious, really) but still... Enjoy.
_______________________________________________________________________

On 29/08/2012, United Parcel Service LTD (UPS) wrote:


United Parcel Service LTD (UPS)

(Customer Service Department)

Gariki Abuja-Nigeria Branch

E-mail:upscourier_delivery@post.com

+2348072239089

INTERNATIONAL DELIVERY DEPARTMENT

Compliment of the day to you dear customer i must say that i am very surprise when i went through your file that you have still not receive your parcel.

I am Jude Abel the newly appointed Dispatch Officer for the UPS Courier Service, Gariki Branch. I wish to inform you that a shipment order will be placed on your parcel with Registration #: 392R-3TVD-CQF the parcel was tendered to us by Officials of the United Nations for onward delivery to you.

Your parcel which was placed on hold by the custom officers has been cleared Tariff Act of 1930 and Title 19 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFRow). Under the Department of Homeland Security the parcel with Registration #: 392R-3TVD-CQF has been cleared and ready to be dispatch to you.

In regards to your mail yes your name is in the file of those who has not claim their parcel. As the newly appointed Dispatch Officer it is my duty to ensure that your parcel get to you without any delay just because of the bad name given to us by the past Director and complains from some of our customer claims that co-ordinators has been extorting money from customer and never send their parcel to them , As the new Dispatch Officer a meeting was held on the 27th of August 2012 to make sure that the files of all customer are being looked into and also check out for customers that have paid and never received their parcel that was when we actually found out that you have not redeemed.

To that effect we decided to help customers with this kind of issues who has not receive their parcel, Please to enable us dispatch this parcel to the right fully owner you are advise to reconfirm your current shipping details so that we can update your profile and your parcel delivery to you without any delay.

Note: You are only required to pay $55 for Security Keeping Fee of your parcel since you have paid for your shipment. Payment of this Security Keeping should be made directly to my officer details:

Receiver Name : Benson Osifo
Location: Nigeria
Text Question: Who is Good
Answer: God

On the confirmation of you payment your package will be set for delivery which you will receive within 36hours.

Your package contain the following information

I. AN ATM CARD (Issued by the GUARANTEE TRUST BANK)
II. ORIGINAL COPY OF INSURANCE BOND
III. UNITED NATIONS VTI INVITATION LETTER
IV. CERTIFICATE OF CLEAR SOURCE OF FUNDS ORIGIN (Issued by Internal Revenue Board)

PACKAGE WEIGHT: 41.52g
PACKAGE COLOUR: Brown
REG NUMBER: CVL/TW/US/254.

We sincerely hope the above information is helpful to you. Should you have any further queries do no hesitate to write to us.

I hope that you use the fund judiciously by serving humanity. Thanks for using our firm as i expect a copy of the receipt of mail soon.
Regards,
Jude Abel,
UPS DELIVERY
OFFICER.

Trefonen

As you may be aware (and if you're not - pay attention!) I have a Flickr account.

I am strictly amateur, and use the site mostly to capture pics of my loved ones. However, I do occasionally also record 'social history' in the shape of streets, shops, houses, etc. as they are. It's amazing how things can change without us realising it, and then we are suddenly looking at a place that we no longer recognise.

One such picture is 'Trefonen Road' and it is a wholly unremarkable shot (I'm sure you will agree) of a few windows in Morda, with the street sign clearly visible. It was shot from outside the Miners Arms (Drill, as was) and was taken with a partly sly attitude, serving as a commentary on how dead the area is. Truth be told, there really is bugger all in Morda. The aforementioned pub doesn't open every night; there is a 'social club' next to the football ground, and then there was the shop.

But, as I would guess with most people, vanity is one of the main drivers for my browsing activity, and I was stunned to see that there were over 500 views of my Flickr pictures during a single day one week not so long ago. One of these was my shot 'Trefonen Road' and - looking a little more deeply - I saw that the picture had been used on a travel website, which for some reason provided people with information about the village of Trefonen.

My original description read - 'Morda's only shop. Now closed down' but I felt so bad for the people of the area that I had to change it, and so it says 'Now that this photo has 'gone viral' I feel I should report that the shop is either now open or will be very soon. Happy days!' I believe this to be true

Not With A Bang

I've more or less given up now. Ben Carruthers - number 4 in the Back Six - played Glenn Gilpin, who was sentenced to 30 years' hard labour. He died of liver failure at the age of 47, and his son played drums briefly with Megadeth. That is all.

I spent much of my formative years (defined for me as between 16-35ish. Challenge this if you like) angrily railing against the current set-up of the Capitalist military-industrial complex and yearning for some kind of anarchist state.  (Apart from an early, brief, and – as I look back on it now – rather bizarre fixation with Nazism. Please don’t judge me. I was young and foolish, had grown up in a very provincial town where even now the BNP poll double the votes [3.2% against 1.6%] of the Green Party, and knew less than nothing about the world. I discovered socialism at about the same time as I discovered pot and patchouli. In any case, if you read this regularly, you’ll know that I’m as left leaning as they come, so I really don’t need to explain away my spotty 15 year-old self) This I suppose was never explored in any great detail, but rather grew out of the sense of anger and sadness at the inequalities in our world. Things just weren’t (and aren’t – let’s face it) right, and something had to be done. However, what that something was did not take shape, and did not seem in any way imminent. Now, after watching the hundreds of police queue for their free breakfast in the staff canteen this morning, as I listen to yet more helicopters hovering above, and as I keep an eye on the Guardian website for updates on the latest student protest, it all seems just that little bit more tangible.

The other night, while I was uploading a YouTube video, Twitter was keeping me up to date with the anonymous DDoS attacks on VISA, and for a moment I was very conflicted. Here was the potential for real progress at last – a sophisticated attack on one of the very pillars of the establishment in response to government efforts to stem the tide of transparency oozing out through the Wikileaks gash. The power of anonymous seemed quite stunning. Out of the blue, a major financial institution was temporarily brought to a standstill by a group of internet users. And this was a good thing. Something which I could applaud as a demonstration of activism and the ability of ordinary people (who know a fair bit about computers) to strike back.

But then a nagging doubt began to claw at the back of my mind. My cash card carries the VISA marque. I remembered the original financial meltdown as Alastair Darling announced the cash injections to save the banking system, and the genuine fear I felt at the time that it really could go tits up. I was on the verge of withdrawing the paltry sum which resided in my bank account at that time, because it all seemed terrifyingly close. Those DDoSs reminded me of that time. I began to think of those things involving VISA on which I – and those close to me – depend, and it all seemed so terribly inconvenient, so bloody scary if you like. This is obviously related to my advancing years and the fact that I have realised just how vulnerable I am, just how potentially close to a life on the street. All my youthful exuberance evaporated.

Crows

On the day that Bob Crow led his merry band out on yet another crusade, a few thoughts about the rights of the working man.  I’ll start by saying that I’m under no illusion as to the plain fact that a lot of people have a clear intention to do sod-all for a living.  Recent finds in the work archive have served only to further reinforce that view.

How on earth some people manage to get away with what they do (probable theft, and definite negligence of a kind which was ultimately classed as gross negligence; blatant feigning of injury – including photographic evidence of such – to swing extended periods of sick leave. These are to name but two of the ‘matters’ on a certain member of staff’s file.  And the resulting action? The man was promoted! Really) is little short of incredible.  Any employing manager has to be sure he has dotted every single sodding ‘i’ and crossed every single fucking ‘t’ if he is to successfully dismiss one of these bastards.



But.  That said, I still feel that a Union is an important organisation, and one which provides some sterling support for the individual worker.  Not everyone (thankfully) is quite as bad as the example cited above, and many more people have been fucked over by their employer, so  I support the idea (if not always the real world execution) of a union.  A couple of points I need to make however:

1. I’m not (and have never been) a member of any union
2. I’m now a (very very junior) part of the arch enemy of the union – management

Point number 1 might explain why I have only been in temporary employment for the past 3 years. Although there would have been no guarantee that union representation would have saved my job(s), it might just have made a difference.  My father, before he retired, was a lifelong member of the T&GWU, but things were very different then.  Should I ever succeed in turning my current role into a permanent one, I may consider joining one, although Point number 2 might have some bearing on that.  Maybe it would be an ‘association’ instead...


Anyway, point number 2 means I am expected not only to present a business as usual face, refusing to allow the disruption to have any effect on our service, ensuring that my staff are docked pay for taking industrial action, etc, but it is also kind of expected to make knowing comments and sneer at the general concept of unions.  This I cannot do, despite the fact that I find the reasons for this particular walkout more than a little spurious.  I do have some inside information (though nothing which has not been in the media, I hasten to add) and there really is very little justification for bringing the capital to its knees this time, aside from the ongoing ideological war which must never cease.

I believe the culprit this time is technology, in the shape of the wondrous Oyster card.  Nowadays, there is no need for many Londoners ever to visit a ticket office at Underground stations.  If they are not topping up the card online, they can simply interact with machines.  Some stations (according to the official TfL line) are only selling 6 tickets an hour, and so around 800 ticket office posts will be cut.  Further communication says that safety will not be compromised, and that the remaining thumb twiddlers will be moved from their ghost-like cabins to the stations themselves, in ‘customer-oriented’ roles. That remains to be seen, but few can deny the logic that it will be a waste of what little money may be forthcoming from Gideon’s coffers in April to pay people for not selling tickets.


These jobs are under threat as a direct consequence of advances in technology, and this is just another manifestation of the enormous changes which are steadily engulfing us.  I am a regular library user, and have been very happy to see the changes wrought by the internet on this particular institution.  By that, I don’t mean Kindles or any other readers (iPad included. I’m not anti, just haven’t got into it yet. I’m sure that if I do, there will be no turning back. Until I get to have a go on one...) but rather automated check-in and return of borrowed books.  I now receive an email on the day before my books are due back, and can even check out my items without ever having to interact with a member of staff.

Of course, somebody still needs to understand the Dewey system sufficiently to take all of the books out of the returns bin and place them back on the shelf, as well as sticking those return date sheets in the front along with the magnetic anti-theft things, but for how long will this be the case?

American City

Thanks to the NASL Photo Gallery (http://home.att.net/~nasl/gallery.htm) for the image

Please welcome my first guest writer - Mike Francis. Mike is an American, but don't hold that against him. We struck up a friendship via Twitter and City (follow Mike here for witty and insightful tweets) and he has put together this piece on being a City fan in the US of A. The only editing I've done is formatting to fit the Blogger layout. Thanks, Mike. Take it away!

AMERICAN CITY- by Mike Francis

Why does an American born on Long Island NY who now lives in Florida cheer for Man City? When this question was first asked of me I honestly didn't know how to answer but after thinking about.....it's in my DNA.

Growing up on Long Island, NY in the 80's you maybe surprised to learn that Soccer, as us Americans call it, was the most popular sport played by the kids. Many of the families who lived in my town were first generation immigrants. Pickup games were seen throughout the town. Italians, Irish, South Americans/Mexicans were all well represented. My best friend was Carlos from Chile. His dad Carlos Sr was the first one to "teach" me how to play. All this meant to a 6yr old was to do something other then toe the ball down the field and run after it. The city league started at age 7 and I still remember it like it was yesterday, 11 kids on each side where the only time we were lined up in a 4-4-2 was at kickoff. As soon as that ball was kicked, it was like a scene from Braveheart, 20 kids running at each other and after the ball yelling at the top of our lungs.

The city league was great but it only went up to the age of 12 so the only other opportunity I had to play organized soccer was in High School. I was still in my "I love to play just to play" mentality. I found out the hard way that playing for fun and playing to win are too different things. I could have dealt with the change in attitude if I had the ability but after playing with the other guys, I knew my playing days were just about over. I was too slow and just not good enough to be playing with these other kids. They placed me on the freshman team and I think it was because they had the room on the bench. I did some mop up time at the end of some blow out games but that was it. My dream of playing professionally in England was over.

Wait, what was that last sentence? Play for England, where did that come from? My grandfather was born in England, specifically Manchester. He moved to New York with his wife and 4 children prior to WW2. I never met the man; by the time I was born he already passed away. Given my love of the game when the World Cup came around, I had to cheer for somebody, I chose England. It wasn't like the US was an option!! The World Cup was the only time soccer was ever on television. I had to watch even if I was surrounded by Italians, Mexicans, Brazilians and South American country supporters. England was my team and I wanted to play there when I grew up.

After my freshman year, I stopped playing. The World Cup was over so there were no games on TV. I lost touch with the game and soon left for college and then the real world. World Cup 2006 was my re-introduction to the game. I was now living in Florida where college football is king. During that summer I would catch some cup games on TV but also go downtown to the Irish Pub. I would go alone as none of my other friends watched the game. It wouldn't matter, as the pub would be packed with supporters. Even though I showed up alone, once there, I wasn't alone. Everyone there was your friend. I have never been to a game in person but the one thing I always enjoyed watching was the atmosphere in the stands. It wasn't just a game, it was a celebration of your team. My love for the game I had as a kid was back.

Options are wonderful to have so when I had the chance to subscribe to satellite television, I jumped on it. I can subscribe to a ridiculous amount of channels if I could only afford it. One of the options is the soccer package, which you may see me tweet about. I love being able to see every EPL game along with all of the UEFA games but why do I need to subscribe to 2 different soccer packages at twice the price in order to see the games I want?? I’m not going in to it here but I did subscribe to one. I finally have the chance to see real professional soccer. Now that I’m able to see the games, I had to pick a team. Knowing that my Grandfather was from Manchester I checked with my dad to see if he knew which team Pop cheered for. I was praying it was City because I hate the color red, I have no red clothes, hate red cars, just don’t like the color. Once my dad said he was a Man City guy, I was relieved and ecstatic. I have my team now and my team is CITY.

What is it?

I briefly touched on this subject at the end of my last post. Reluctant as I always am to write about a subject which is being covered by everybody, with newspapers even reporting sodding tweets these days, and what the fuck could I add that hasn't already been said, right? - I will be writing (mostly) about Twitter, but the principles could just as easily apply to other strands of 'social media'. If you like.

I have around 130 followers (OK, maybe slightly fewer than that) currently on Twitter, though a proportion of that number are marketing type accounts, a large-ish percentage are now slebs (my main worry about Twitter is that slebs are taking over - their natural wit and honed writing skills forcing the plebs to the sidelines, and as a result, the celebrities - along with a few uber-geeks - get to set the agenda. But what are you gonna do?) a few are similar saddoes to myself, aiming to try and enhance their online personae by upping their following quota, and a very small minority are actual, real people. People I have seen in the meat, or - more rarely - have 'met' online. The latter I will discount for the time-being, because they are, almost by default, more new media friendly, but the former are - in the words of the fabulous Beasties - my primary bone of contention.



For reasons many and various, most of the people I know do not tweet. Not really. There are a couple who do (in fact, to be completely accurate, only two of my real life acquaintances keep up a regular stream of Twitterhood, and one of those is a newbie. One other chooses to dip in whenever the fancy takes him, but I have long since given up on trying to figure that guy out. You know who you are) I can detect nervousness in some friends, along the lines of: 'Who are these people, and why are they following me?' or 'Everyone will think I'm a dick'. I can also see a 'what's the fucking point?' attitude in one or two, which is fair enough I suppose. Though I have managed to talk one guy into signing up on the basis that it's a cheap way to keep in contact when separated by geography, he studiously refuses to update his status and only uses the site for direct messaging.

But, perhaps more interestingly, I have also heard a general objection to the whole idea of social media (though Facebook seems to have escaped this particular censure) on the grounds that 'everyone is talking, but nobody is listening'. The complaint, such as it is, is that the rise of Web 2.0 (not sure if this is still a term we can use...?) is either symptom or cause of the general decline in society. Indeed, there have been some strands along these lines, with many bemoaning the rise of troll culture, and the opportunities online communities afford people to vent anonymously. This is an extension of a general impatience with human communication - or the lack of it - and Twitter perhaps neatly sums up the phenomenon. Although I can see the point to a degree, I cannot whole-heartedly agree. Despite the dearth of meatspace contacts among my followers, I have enjoyed some good communication, and generally feel that I have learnt, and continue to learn, something from the 140 character musings of those whose tweets I follow.

I am still mystified, and a little disappointed, that more of those I know have not taken to it with the same enthusiasm as me. Bastards.

Severance

How shoddy is this? I believe that I will be leaving my job at the end of next week, but I'm still not sure. Ol' Blue Eyes hasn't seen fit to reply to an email confirming this, and it has been suggested that I might be asked to provide cover till the end of the year and beyond. It is, I must admit, a rather odd position to be in, though it has meant that I have been able to expand my Twitter activity considerably, even as the thing morphs from its old 'what are you doing...?' ethos to a 'how much are you making...?' one. Even Biz's profile pic has gone from a soy latte slurping hippy to a tight polo neck wearing silicon valley warrior. Ah well, everything's a pitch these days.

The hardest thing, I'm finding, is how to tell people I'm leaving. It's difficult enough not knowing whether I'm actually confirmed as out the door, but coupled with the inevitable follow-up questions of 'Oh, where are you going?' etc., to which I have to answer with replies such as; 'Oh, keeping my options open...' and other such banalities. It's all a bit of a chore.

I am seeking solace in a planned trip back to Os in a couple of weeks, if I can somehow get round upsetting the kids by not appearing at their drama school presentation. Curses curses curses! Should that fail, I aim to achieve 10,000 hits on this blog by the end of the year. Currently, I'm running at around 9,500, so any contributions will be gladly received. I also aim to significantly ramp up my hours on the bike, and to take photos when I arrive wherever I'm cycling to. I have plans to shoot and edit a fun Christmas movie before the end of December. I won't give away any of my ideas. You'll just have to wait until it is released. Also, to provide some extra maths help for the kids as I don't want them to be numerophobic as I was when in school. The memory of Mrs Jones the maths teacher still makes my blood run cold. Oh, and perhaps I might find a job.

I cannot, I'm sure, rely on Man City giving me any kind of fillip, and I fear another Liverpool defeat today at Anfield.

Why I gave up on "White Teeth"

I became really irritated with it, and I could only finish it if I was locked in a cell. With no food. And a padlock on my zip.

Shitter

As I struggle with my challenge, for which I have set the deadline of the end of the month, and with which I am struggling to apply the necessary effort (it feels a bit like being back at school or college, but with none of the pressure of a teacher or lecturer breathing down my neck) I will tease out some of the themes I am exploring for the challenge in relation to entirely different subject matter.

At the risk of being a hated iconoclast, I would say that it all started with Stephen Fry, then quickly moved on to John Cleese. But the infection reached maximum levels when Jonathan Ross entered the fray and was complete with the addition of the News of the Screws' showbiz writer. I refer of course to the slow death of Twitter. It's an odd thing, as I'm sure I've said before, that some people have just never got it (Graham Linehan - who tweets under the name of Mrs Doyle - rather satisfyingly uses the word 'grok' in this context, and the bloke off Myth Busters talks of being unable to persuade members of his family to join in, even though he is an extremely enthusiastic participant. For myself, I know of no other personal contacts who tweet, though some do seem to follow me) while others can't seem to stop. I have loved it for the two years or so that I have been indulging, and I guess partly for the reason that it always sat outside the mainstream media, while at the same time forming a meta-discourse on it. Reading about the gradual shutdown of the Mars Phoenix lander was one of the high points for me. I actually found the final moments very moving, and I have to give kudos to the guys at Mission Control for imbuing a piece of metal on a far distant cold rock with a personality. The sad fact of the matter is that Twitter is increasingly a story in itself, and I am firmly of the opinion that inclusion in the London Paper is enough reason to hate anything.

Stephen cannot be blamed too much I suppose. He is one of the stately homos of England after all, and it was fun and illuminating to read his tweets of rage at Windows Vista, joy at the wonders of the natural world, and see his pix of Madagascar. A little light went out when I read recently, however, about the Beeb taking exception to him tweeting material from his latest trip to Australia/New Zealand for copyright reasons. Seeing Cleese appear was something of a shock, but it turns out that he is carving out a little 2.0 niche for himself, and again it's hard to maintain any sense of anger towards the man. The same cannot be said of Mr Ross, who has an uncanny ability to be excellently funny (on the radio at least) and infuriatingly lovey, especially on his Friday night chat show. The Sun now regularly trawls Wossy's Twitter feed for nuggets of information. And that, my friends, is that.

Vinegar strokes

Amidst all the talk of foundations shaking in Wall Street and in the Square Mile, I thought it would be nice to escape for a while to the fantasy land of Wii, where it has been interesting to read about the lawsuit in regard to the motion detection technology so beloved of fat families throughout the developed world. I am a late adopter of the fabulous fun to be had from this thang, and am defiantly retro in my undying love of Mario Kart, which I remember from the SNES days and nights wasted (oh yeah!) in Old Street.

I have a mobile phone with its own motion sensing (from the Sony website, I quote: "It's all in your moves. With Shake control, you select a song from your playlist randomly at the flick of your wrist") capabilities - a Sony Ericsson W580i - which is, on the whole, rubbish (battery life is very poor, and I feel like a 13 year old carrying it around) but which nevertheless has an interesting feature. It detects motion. After a few simple configurations (much simpler than setting up a cycle computer) you can work out your walking or running speed and the phone then monitors your activity. It calculates the number of steps and miles walked or run and the quantity of calories burned, has the capability of downloading to CSV, and even awards you medals. Fantastic! I have a silver for being a 'Wanderer' and a gold for 'Round the World', but so far the 'Fitness' and 'Jogger' sections have remained medal free.

I have developed a habit of watching the counter as I walk - just to verify the accuracy of the metrics. There are some irritations, but on the whole it seems to be reasonably on the button. I like it when the counter clicks on as I walk, and have even been known to increase my pace to see what effect this has, but sometimes the thing just freezes. Yesterday, for example, the counter reached 11,107 steps, and so I slowed to a stop, desperately trying to make it hit 11,111, but it stuck there, 4 steps back! I walked a little, then restarted the application, but was infuriated to see that it had jumped straight to 11,115.

I don't know how the phone detects motion, and I have spent the odd evening in the kitchen furiously pumping my arms back and forth to see if and how it registers that. Natch, one thing leads to another, and I thought that there ought to be a masturbation setting on the phone. I'd be sure to get a gold medal at least.

Visibility

A kid in a candy shop could go either way; scarf everything in sight till the vomit comes rising into the mouth, or become so overwhelmed with the choices that he is stunned into inaction - forever dithering over the bewildering choice in front of him. I knew it would happen. It had to. Now I don't know where to turn first, and will be forever stuck in a loop.

Up to now (in order) there was always:

my Gmail account and then (depending on the contents thereof):
any new tweets;
then Flickr;
then this blog.

And always climaxing with music. Sweet music.



Which leads me down its dusky highways to who knows where. It's a wonderful, mysterious adventure...

But that's an aside. The elephant in the room these days is Facebook. It's an incredibly powerful thing, a hyper-fast networking tool, and a revealer of awful truths. The past does not lie when it stares you in the face, and those who were there will have no truck with your bullshit, my friend. Oh no. I still can't quite come to terms with it. People at work have asked to become my friends, but I have so far chosen to ignore them, because some other of my FB friends could easily post something (whether it be in word or picture form) which would compromise my, erm, integrity in the office.

Some names and faces have swum out of the ether, from the mists of the almost forgotten, and seeing and hearing them has caused a whole rush of memories. In some ways, I wish I had never joined, though I am impressed by the slick interfaces and ease of use. As I knew it would, it has to an extent taken over, and those other online loves of my life have suffered as a result. But I know just as well that I will never be able to stop.

Tweet badger

Been there, done that, got the t shirt. As you can see.

I was 'poked' (at least I think that's the correct term) recently by a friend who wanted me to join Facebook so that he could show me his - as it were. I have never been overly tempted by this particular social networking tool (I did join Bebo, in an attempt to be able to find the legendary Daddy Dick, but without success, and have never done anything with my account there. Honest) mostly because everyone else seems to be doing it. I had a vague idea that - like MySpace - it was owned by some mutli-national conglomerate, but have since checked and found out that Microsoft only own 1.6% of the company (bought for an eye-watering $246 million!) so, er, that's all right then. I also know that once I started, I wouldn't be able to stop. And I have enough on my virtual plates as it is - keeping them spinning is enough of a challenge for this particular end of the pier show.

I am, of course, contemplating the idea, but am concerned that some of my other virtual loves will inevitably suffer as a result. I had planned to extol the virtues of one of these - Twitter - in this post, till I received an email from the saintly Biz Stone informing me that Twitter will no longer be serving SMS delivery of direct messages outside the US, Canada and India. There is - as ever - some laughable indignation amongst the Twitterers, who are all fuming that the free service they have been enjoying for so long is going to be withdrawn. I agree with them only insofar as Twitter released the information on the same day that they took the service away. A bit of notice would have been nice, guys. Though I am admittedly a little peeved at losing it, I would definitely draw the line at a 'tweet strike day' as some (mostly Aussies) are planning for August 18th.

If we are to believe the oh-so-sweet Mr Stone, there is a cost of $1000 per user per year for operating the SMS service. Apparently, 2.2 million accounts are registered with them at the moment, and although the vast majority of these must be in the US, Canada and India, it's still likely to be no small beer.

The question for me is: where is Twitter going? I do feel that this move is the first step towards monetising the venture, and I will be interested to see what the next will be. There seems to be a stubborn silence from Twitter HQ to questions of subscription or premium services (charging an annual fee, similar to the Flickr Pro account for example) and no mention of any deals with SMS providers, which seem to be there in plenty. I can only assume that there is some grand plan there and that they are going to surprise us all.

But most importantly, if I'm FBing all the damn time, who's going to look after my precious bloggy-wog? Not sure if that quite works in the same way as Russell Brand's book title, but I'm going to run with it. See where it gets me.

Happy Blog day!

It is one year since I started this whole blogging thing. Originally, my main focus was on football, Man City and Sven-Göran Eriksson, and it's been quite a year for him as well as for me, though I have drifted away slightly from the beautiful game in my musings, and he has ended up (again) several million pounds richer and living in Mexico. Somewhat different paths, but there you go.

In every close season I start feeling a bit fed up with football, and this year it's worse than ever because it really does seem as if what little heart and soul left in the game has evaporated. Every other story seems to be about who's buying out which club, which massively overpaid 'star' is moving to or from Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea, whatever, and what the players' female companions (I refuse to use the term'WAG' on principle) are wearing, buying, selling...

As for City, I'm not, and - ahem - have never been, happy about Shinawatra being in charge of the team, and in common with Simon Hattenstone, am pondering a divorce from the club. It's very hard to tear oneself away even so, and I know that I will still be watching the results at a quarter to five on a Saturday afternoon. That's if any games are going to actually kick off at 3.00 on a Saturday in future. Despite protests from some critics I will probably post more about footy. So there!

I have been asked 'How do you find the time?' To which I can only shrug and say that I make the time. Sometimes a subject burns with me, so that I feel compelled to write about it, others I write when I'm in the mood, building up a post over time and scheduling publication for later.

But perhaps more interestingly, I have been asked 'Why do you do it?'

And why do I do it indeed? When I started, I had been reading some forums for a while, mostly Metafilter and Comment Is Free, and was really taken by the way that a discussion could develop with the participation of the readers, becoming something quite different to what it had originally been. I think -dredging up stuff from my college days - that it's called intertextuality. Most tellingly in this vein has been the development of Seth Freedman's views on the Israel/Palestine conflict. It is worth spending some time (if you have any) reading about this, I think. So, where MeFi often made me laugh, CiF often made me angry, and I joined both in order to be able to express my opinions. It seemed a logical step after that to set up a forum of my own. Of course, Blogger being a free service, and a couple of clicks away, certainly helped.

I have always wanted to be a writer (though I'm under no illusions as to my abilities) and a year or so ago, on the back of a redundancy and an uncertain personal future, vaguely thought that I might be able to make a living out of internet publishing someday. Now, a year on, I'm under no illusions on that score either. It doesn't look like I'll be pulling a Kottke-esque blog wage anytime soon. But it doesn't matter. Blogging has given me the opportunity to tell a small but loyal audience how I'm feeling, what's been going on in my life, and I hope raise the occasional smile or provoke the occasional thought. The best thing about it has been the (admittedly rare) occasions when two friends who don't know each other have started a discussion in the comments section, and I have become a bystander in my own blog. That there is one commenter who is able to hold a (usually surreal) conversation with himself is neither here nor there, but it certainly brings a smile to my face when I read his comments.

Just a few stats to finish. I have posted 146 times in this past year, with November 07 the month with the most posts (22).

The most commented on post was entitled Easter My Worries from the 21st of March this year with 27 comments made. After 'football' (50 tags) and 'city' (45 tags) the highest tag is 'politics' with 25. My favourite post is entitled Faith Hope & Charity, published in November 07. The biggest disappointment is always when I put in a deal of effort to build a detailed post and am confronted with tumbleweed blowing across a dusty plain, or worse, people don't bother to click on the hyperlinks. When that happens, I try to think about how often I actually read 'non professional' blogs myself and then carry on.

I hope you've enjoyed it, at least some of the time, as much as I have. I aim to carry on for a while. When I (finally) reach 5,000 hits I know that I'll be thinking about hitting 10,000.

Stat attack

Some time ago, I posted a piece about my online presence. I think it's time to update the numbers, in light of the fact that the blog anniversary, is in a little over 3 weeks. So, up to this moment, I:

Have posted 141 times to this blog. Last count, there were 4125 hits recorded, which is pretty pathetic, so I would like to send out a request to all my friends to see if I can reach the 5000 mark for the 25th of June.

Have updated on Twitter 263 times

Have 1680 songs in my iTunes library

Am storing 1451 pictures on my external hard drive

Have put 346 pics on Flickr and 252 on Zooomr

Have contributed 3 posts, 32 comments to MeFi, 1 posts and 3 comments to MetaTalk, 4 questions and 8 answers to Ask MeFi and have been favourited 12 times
Have posted 35 comments to CiF
Have posted 23 videos to YouTube
Have edited 4 sections of Wikipedia

Curses

I am a diletante. Not afraid to say it. I quite like video games, but (with the exception of some seriously old school stuff like Space Invaders or Asteroids and to an extent Defender, and even then - back in the day - I wasn't anywhere near the top performer, despite spending god knows how many lunch hours and 10p pieces from my mum in the leisure centre cafe, but I did reach a kind of unconscious competence in the end) I was never particularly good at them.

I have recently been loaned a copy of Grand Theft Auto - Vice City Stories by one of the guys at work to try out on my daughter's newly purchased PSP. First impressions were generally good. I found the game much richer than any I'd tried previously. There were a few cheap laughs with a strong whiff of racism hidden beneath the veil of irony, and the odd cliche. The animation leaves a bit to be desired, but the music is good, and I like the ability to switch radio channels.

My main beef, though, and this is the same with Prince of Persia, Warrior Within also (though god knows this game has enough other faults, which is probably a discussion for another day) is that it's too easy to get stuck in a rut. You carry out some difficult task, which has to be followed up by some other stuff, making your 'stamina' ebb away, and if you're unsuccessful you're forced to return to the beginning of the level to repeat the difficult task. I find myself losing interest (and patience) rather rapidly and then trying to enter houses or randomly punch people in the street. Good fun for a while, though it soon becomes tiresome. My other problem is that, through the countless efforts I've made at beating Shaydee in PoP WW I have caused the R1 button (which functions as a 'block' command) on my rumble pad to occasionally stick, because I have been holding it in so hard. At crucial moments I end up lying on the floor refusing to respond to my commands and getting stabbed repeatedly till I die.

Driving me nuTsie

When I discovered nuTsie I was very happy (thanks MeFi!) What an excellent way (I thought) to be able to carry my iTunes library with me wherever I went.

Then today, something happened to irritate me. Let me explain.
I have a playlist of profanity related songs, which I call 'F Word'. OK, it's not that imaginative, but I like it, so there. Here are the tracks:

Bitches Ain't Shit - Ben Folds
Bastard - Mott the Hoople
Bodies - Sex Pistols
Fuck Forever - Babyshambles
Fuckin' Up - Neil Young (this version is with Pearl Jam, BTW)
Fucking Ada - Ian Dury & The Blockheads (sorry, can't find a YT link for that, you'll have to listen on nuTsie if you want to hear it)
I want a fucking car - excerpt from Planes, Trains & Automobiles with Steve Martin
It's A Motherfucker -Eels
Kill You - Eminem
Me & My Bitch - Notorious B.I.G
Oh Shit! - Buzzcocks (again, can't find a YT link, so I'm sending you to the Buzzcocks site)
Paul (skit) - Eminem (no link here - move along please)
Public Service Announcement - Eminem (see below)
Relaxing at Club F****n - Koop (the asterisks are not mine, but are in the original title)
Sit On My Face - Monty Python
Steve Berman - Eminem ('lyrics' only, sorry)
There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards - Ian Dury & The Blockheads
Three The Hard Way - Beastie Boys
Tits On The Radio - Scissor Sisters
Too Drunk To Fuck - Dead Kennedys

There are more to come as it is an evolving list. In particular, thanks to the Guardian Readers Recommend section, John Lennon's Working Class Hero and Marianne Faithfull's Why'd Ya Do It, which I had never heard of, but whose lyrics are simply gobsmacking.

Anyway, my issue is that some of the songs on the list are bowdlerised versions, particularly Notorious B.I.G and the Eminem snips. The second example is far more egregious in my opinion, as we are not simply talking bleeps as in the Me & My B*tch (yes, they really do list it that way) but a totally different version. Here are the original lyrics:

Announcer: This is another public service announcement brought to you, in part, by Slim Shady
Eminem: (whispered): Tell 'em I don't give a fuck
Announcer: Slim Shady does not give a FUCK...what you think!
Eminem: Tell 'em to suck it
Announcer: If you don't like it, you can suck his fucking cock!
Eminem: Tell 'em they kissed my ass
Announcer: Little did you know, upon purchasing this album, you have just kissed his ass!
Eminem: Tell 'em I'm fed up
Announcer: Slim Shady is fed up with your shit...and he's going to kill you!
Eminem: Yeah
Announcer: Uh...anything else?
Eminem: Yeah...SUE ME.

And here is the version nuTsie came up with:

Announcer: This is a public service announcement brought to you in part by Slim Shady. The views and events expressed here are totally fucked and are not necessarily the views of anyone. However, the events and suggestions that appear on this album are not to be taken lightly. Children should not partake in the listening in this album with laces in their shoes. Slim Shady is not responsible for your actions. Upon purchasing this album you have agreed not to try this at home [In the background]
Any thing else?
Eminem: Yeah. Don't do drugs.

How fucking lame is that? I ask you. I suppose I know that it's not really nuTsie's fault. After all, many of the other songs came through OK, and all nuTsie can do is find a track online which matches those I've put up. I do object, as I've said ad nauseam, that we are forced to put up with this bollocks. How can Eminem even have contemplated making that second version?

Deleted by moderator

Let me apologise right off the bat for the blessayishness of this post.

I have had a comment deleted from a CiF message board. Hooray for me. I think it must mean you get a few extra points on your Qdos score. But maybe you have to be banned to really make it, or even have to pick another Gmail address and register as someone else? Anyway, apart from feeling quite excited about it, I am also more than a little fucked off.

Here's the deal. I have posted on here before about the general issue of censorship on CiF, and how I feel about it, but it was interesting for me to experience - personally - being censored. Said comment was in response to a piece of garbage about sex education penned by Anne Atkins. Her argument in the piece (such as it is) goes something like this:

'There's too much sex education, and that's why there are so many unwanted pregnancies. There may be a decline in sexually transmitted diseases, but this has been bought at the expense of a serious lapse in the moral fabric of the family and society. If we wish to address these issues, we should aim to teach teenagers about the value of abstaining from sex outside marriage, be more like the US in that regard, and move away from the poisonous liberalism of sex education in such moral cesspools as Holland, for example.'

I paraphrase, but feel free to read the original article if you feel like winding yourself up. I think I've precised it reasonably well.

Now, to quote from a review of the Creationist Museum, recently posted by John Scalzi:

"Imagine, if you will, a load of horseshit. And we’re not talking just your average load of horseshit; no, we’re talking colossal load of horseshit..."

There is no need to imagine. First of all, there is not too much sex education (whatever the hell that would be in any case) in our schools. As Polly Toynbee (of whom I am no fan either, don't get me wrong) pointed out in an earlier article, sex education is actually in decline in our schools, partly - though not entirely - as a result of faith schools opting out. Secondly, the incidence of STDs is on the increase, and even syphilis is making an extremely unwelcome return. Third, the policy of encouraging abstinence from sex is an unmitigated failure when it comes to preventing unwanted pregnancies, as figures comparing the rates for it in the USA and other countries illustrate. One caveat, prompted by a look at Wikipedia on the matter, is that definitions of teenage pregnancy differ in the US and the UK, and that the whole issue is a socio-political one as much as it is simply about biology. My own position is (as in so many areas) that education holds the key. Real education, not some pointless homilies about being a good Christian.
Updated (7/12/07) Research shows that US policy on abstinence as a means of contraception is an abject failure.

So. Horseshit:

"An epic load of horseshit. The kind of load of horseshit that has accreted over decades and has developed its own sort of ecosystem, from the flyblown chunks at the perimeter, down into the heated and decomposing center..."

But there's no need to go into all that. If you have ever read a CiF piece, you will know that every point of view gets aired eventually, as long as there's sufficient mileage in the original article. Every point of view that is, except for those which are edited or deleted by the moderators, as mine was. Did I mention that?

I know of Anne Atkins, sad to say. I came across her (work, fnarr fnarr) whilst flicking through Metafilter one day. You may not believe what I write, so please do click on the links to substantiate the facts. Basically, some time ago, AA created a fake teenage girl cyber personality ('Cheshakitten' - actually quite a good name, isn't it?) on Bebo in order to lure her own teenage son Ben into what he would believe to be a romantic tryst. Her intention was to see what (implied negative) effect social networking sites were having on the youth of today. An interesting project perhaps, but what a sick way of conducting the experiment, I'm sure you'll agree. At the very least, I thought, revealing this would undermine her self-appointed position as arbiter of morality on this relatively complex issue, and I was minded to point it out to the CiF community. I posted the link to the story, along with my comment and a further link to the Metafilter thread which discussed it. The comment (I'm sorry I didn't keep a copy, and have now started to do so) went like this:

"Attention! This woman is dangerous. She pretended to be a teenage girl on Bebo to try and trap her own (also teenage) son into a romantic liaison. She has no right to pass as a moral arbiter on teenage sex."

One of the things which I enjoy about online forums (fora?) is the interaction with others, so I checked back this morning to see if my post had encouraged any debate on the issue, and there it was. Or rather wasn't. My user name on the left and 'comment deleted by moderator' on the right. I wondered why. Maybe the words 'this woman is dangerous' had caused the removal? As far as I could remember, there was nothing defamatory or personal in what I had said. It was not insulting or off-topic. I felt a sense of righteous anger that someone had decided that what I had written was unacceptable, according to some standard of which I could not be aware, and emailed the Comment Is Free people to express my feelings.

At the same time, I slightly rephrased what I originally said and then re-posted. So far, it has stayed on, and has even elicited a response or two. I hope it stays that way.

Camino Royale

Ah, the power of Jason Kottke. No wonder the guy is paid handsomely (enough to be able to employ a writer for his blog!) as he certainly knows which buttons to press in an understated New York City kind of way.

I was recently perusing his 'home of fine hyper-text products' and happened to see an ad for Camino displayed. Ad placement on his site is a fine example of the power of understatement in our saturation age. He uses The Deck to run a cycle of single small ads halfway down the page. Now, compare that to the commercial jumble - not just here, but on many other blogs - and the old adage that less is more was never so true.

I've been a Firefox user for some time now, for no good reason (above Safari) other than brand desire, I suppose. Following a click-through (and another few cents in Jason's bin) I read that Camino is a more Mac friendly browser and is supposedly extremely fast at loading pages. I decided to give it a try, and downloaded and installed it as my default browser last night. Here are my initial thoughts:

1. As was promised, it is fast. You may have guessed that I am far from a professional when it comes to my technology requirements. No Photoshop needs for me. The nano-seconds of difference in operating speeds of faster RAM don't register, and I really (really) wouldn't mind if I was using a Radeon HD2400 XT (TM) instead of an HD2600 Pro (TM) for my graphics. It's always struck me as similar to the kind of nerdy obsession of people who talk about the importance of quality 'hi-fi' systems in preference to the actual musical content played on them. One guy I knew actually said that he didn't have any musical preferences at all, caring only about the sound quality. But, having said that, I did notice a perceptible difference in page loading times. Certain sites will be a problem no matter what (I'm looking at you Zooomr) but the trend was generally quicker.

2.    It sure is purty. A lot of effort has gone into making the UI feel like the Mac environment, and even radio buttons within sites have been given that Aqua tint. This in itself is rather pathetically pleasing, a bit like the little extra touches you get from Marks & Spencer. You feel somehow guilty afterwards because you were taken in by unnecessary frippery, but at the time, you're convinced that it's worth it.

Tabbed browsing (which I do find useful) works well, but the bookmarks bar and the tabs are very close together, meaning you have to be pretty careful with your cursor. Last night, I accidentally interrupted a large-ish upload of pics because I clicked into a bookmark instead of an adjacent tab. I know that I could have taken the time to check out the keyboard shortcuts, but generally I find these take a while to bed in on any application, and sometimes, whatever, you're gonna reach for that mouse. So, a small thumbs down there.

That's about it on first impressions. I like it, and will continue to use it for the foreseeable, trying out some features and posting updates on anything (good or bad) that I come across.

But for now, in an Advent Calendar style, I will unveil this post's example of egregious opulence:

A $1,000,000 mobile phone which was exhibited at the 2006 Millionaire Fair in Moscow. I think I'm going to be sick.

Nerdy happyhood

I thought it would be interesting to review some statistics.

Up to now I:

Have posted 82 times to this blog
Have updated on Twitter 106 times
Have 1329 songs in my iTunes library (up to date on nuTsie)
Am storing 1480 pictures on my external hard drive
Have put 176 pics on Flickr and 133 on Zooomr
Have contributed 3 posts, 28 comments to MeFi, 1 post and 3 comments to MetaTalk, 4 questions and 8 answers to Ask MeFi
Have posted 15 comments to CiF
Have posted only 3 videos to YouTube
Have edited 3 sections of Wikipedia

During the 11 months I have worked for Channel 4, I have completed a total of 1462.9 hours of work, at an average of 29.5 hours per week. The highest number of hours I have worked in any week is 38.7.

Does the fact that I really like all this stuff qualify me as a nerd?

blogging

internet

Irritations

Update - 2/10/07. Google have responded to my phish report. The account was a spoof Gmail account in addition to being a phish. I hope they track 'em down and cut their balls off. That will make things better for people.

This week, I will write of passwords.

Like a lot of folks round here, I divide my UGC activities between home and (ahem) work. As I am a Mac user at home, and a Windows sufferer in the office, this means I am also cross-platform, though this is increasingly less of an issue.

One example is my Gmail account, which is probably the one I access most often. At home on the Mac, the little box next to 'Remember Me On This Computer' (BTW, I haven't checked the box on that last link. It may not be wise, but if you do so, please tell me what happened) is checked, but I recently changed all of my passwords and the Mac remembers the old one, so if I am not watchful, I have the (admittedly small) inconvenience of going to the password verification page once the first attempt fails. I have tried removing the check, thinking to enter the new password the next time and then to re-check the box, but still, the old password keeps auto-filling.

At work, auto-fill is not an option on almost all website logins (cookies and security or something - I do know that this can be a problem, especially in a shared workstation environment) BUT my Gmail login page remembers the new password anyway.

On the subject of Gmail, spam seems to be on the increase. Not a problem for a long while, but I've had 2 spasms recently, and 1 rather lame attempt at phishing (the email purported to be from The Bank Of America and, as a valued customer - snort - they were seeking to verify my account details. It came from another Gmail account - not even bankofamerica@gmail.com, but some cruddy name and number combination - and the copyright symbol at the bottom was actually a @)

Now, on to Twitter. On the Mac, Twitter autofills my user name and password as soon as I enter the first letter of the former - 3 keystrokes and I'm in. Lovely. At work, I have to tap away manually.

Metafilter - at home, I appear to have (missus) an automatic login - as soon as I hit Login hard enough, I'm straight in, which doesn't seem right as anyone could get in there far too easily. Know what I mean? MeFi doesn't even have a 'Remember Me On This Computer' option. Go figure. At work, manual entry is again required. On a daily basis.

Flickr is OK despite what some people I know have said about entering a lost password hell of Kafkaesque proportions. I log into 2 accounts, and at home, it simply remembers the last name I logged in under, with an option to change user name if necessary. At work, manual completion again. It's all very odd - no doubt due to IP addresses, firewall verifications, etc. etc.